Please can you tell us about The Dress is 15 words or less?
A tale of one extraordinary dress and the lives of the nine women it touches.
What inspired you to write The Dress?
The impetus for this book came from an urban legend of sorts—
The story of a dress in the 80’s allegedly returned to Bloomingdales covered in formaldehyde. I have no idea if the story is true or not but it left me wondering, “What ever could have happened to that dress?” I worked my way backwards from there and the story of Nine Women, One Dress was born.
Where do you do most of your writing?
When the words are coming easy to me I write at my dining room table in my apartment in Manhattan. When they’re not I force myself to sit in a New York Public Library. Although they are naturally supposed to be quiet places they are actually filled with hushed or silent distractions. There is something about the atmosphere that forces me into my work.
What is your favourite book?
It’s a tie between A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and To Kill A Mockingbird. It’s really the writing that moves me most in both of them. I can read them over and over again. I also love The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy and The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving. More recently, I was very moved by Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Which part of The Dress did you enjoy writing the most?
The story of Arthur and Felicia was probably the most enjoyable to write. It’s such a simple love story and it flowed out of me easily. I enjoyed writing the characters of Tomà s and Ruthie who work in the dress department at Blookmingdales the most. Their personalities and thoughts made me laugh as I was creating them.
Who is your favourite literary heroine?
Jo from Little Women. She is strong, smart, opinionated and willing to do anything for her family. She reminds me of my three daughters rolled up into one.
Do you have any tips for readers who are looking to become published writers?
Write your first draft as if no one is reading it then edit, edit and edit some more. Don’t get discouraged. Listen to the voice in your head that says you’re great, not the one that says otherwise.
Are you working on anything else at the moment and if so, can you tell us?
A novel called The August of Esmè Nash.
It’s the story of a 28-year-old Upper East-side socialite whose life is upended just as her long-time shrink leaves town for the month.
Thanks, Jane!
The Dress by Jane L Rosen
Natalie is a Bloomingdale’s salesgirl mooning over her lawyer ex-boyfriend who’s engaged to someone else after just two months. Felicia has been quietly in love with her happily married boss for twenty years; now that he’s a lonely widower, she just needs the right situation to make him see her as more than the best executive assistant in Midtown Manhattan.
Andrea is a private detective specializing in gathering evidence on cheating husbands—a skill she unfortunately learned from her own life—and can’t figure out why her intuition tells her the guy she’s tailing is one of the good ones when she hasn’t trusted a man in years. For these three women, as well as half a dozen others in sparkling supporting roles—a young model fresh from rural Georgia, a diva Hollywood star making her Broadway debut, an overachieving, unemployed Brown grad who starts faking a fabulous life on social media, to name just a few—everything is about to change, thanks to the dress of the season, the perfect little black number everyone wants to get their hands on…
Be sure to check out the other stops on the tour!
